


Once In A Lifetime (...in a lifetime...in a lifetime...in a lifetime...)

by thefarofixer



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Repressed Memories, Reunions, death mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 14:46:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18251984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefarofixer/pseuds/thefarofixer
Summary: Quentin needs to do laundry and take a nap, not necessarily in that order.Meanwhile Eliot may be stuck waiting for his knight in floppy hair to rescue him from a mental monster-dungeon, but he’s no damsel in distress…





	1. And You May Say To Yourself My God What Have I Done

**Author's Note:**

> This show is killing me so I needed to write about my boys a little bit. Love the new season but also please somebody give all the characters a hug and an uninterrupted nap.

_ Drenched In Blood: The Quentin Coldwater Story _ , Quentin thinks blearily. 

He probably shouldn’t be this used to it, the copper taste, the smell, the sticky feel of it as it dries tackily on his skin and shirt. The last time they’d been at Brakebills he’d stopped at the Cottage, breaking into Eliot’s room there and finding one of his shirts. It hadn’t smelled like Eliot when he’d pressed it to his face, it had been far too long since Eliot had lived there or worn it, but he’d let himself imagine for a moment that it did. He’d been unnervingly familiar with the comforting scent of  _ Eliot _ even before they’d spent half a century together and he can conjure it up in his mind easily, although the memory doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing. 

He’d been tempted for half a second to take the shirt with him, but he forced himself to leave it behind. It would just end up ruined with someone else’s blood if he wore it, and if he kept it amongst his meagre belongings at the loft sooner or later the Monster would find it and Quentin wouldn’t be able to bear it if the Monster wore something that belonged to Eliot. The Monster’s terrible taste in novelty t-shirts and ill fitting pants was honestly one of the few things holding Quentin’s sanity together and that helped him differentiate the Monster from Eliot at a glance. If in his sleep deprived confusion he ever looked at the Monster and thought  _ Eliot _ he knew that the moment his poor battered heart remembered the truth of their situation it could break in a way he might not recover from.

And he has to make it. Eliot is counting on him.

So he goes with the Monster and disposes of corpses and watches people die and becomes intimately acquainted with the smell touch and taste of blood. He can feel the weight of what’s happening, what he’s  _ letting _ happen on his watch build up on his shoulders but he doesn’t let himself think about it too closely. He doesn’t have the energy for grief  _ and _ guilt, so one of them has to wait. Either there will be time for him to face his moral reckoning later or...there won’t and it won’t matter anyways.

Sometimes in his darker moments when he’s exhausted and his brain starts to run away from him Quentin can’t help let in the intrusive thought that maybe this bloodshed and this suffering is the price he and Eliot have to pay for that life that they lived in Fillory. How many people live long full happy lives like that and get to experience love like they did for so long. So few people find that even once, surely nobody gets that twice. He thinks maybe Eliot was right to turn him, down, that he was greedy for thinking they could’ve done it all over again. And now here they are, so close and so far, each of them tortured by might-have-beens and painful facsimiles of each other, maybe never to truly see each other again. Like they somehow used up their careful ration of love and this wreckage they’re living in now is the result of wanting more.

 

_ Tell Coldwater I’m going to say it to his face. _

 

That was the message that Penny had given him from Eliot after he’d relayed the other information he’d gotten about the Monster that was arguably more dangerous and important. When the others are around he tries to focus on the revelations about the Monster and focus on research and making a new plan, but it’s always there at the back of his mind spinning on a loop.

He knows what he wants it to mean, what he hopes it means, but it feels like asking for too much. It feels like hoping for that on top of everything else might somehow jinx them, might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back so mostly he thinks about getting Eliot back, alive and safe and whole and tells himself that that would be enough. Just Eliot. Just Eliot.

He thinks about how he’d explain his life now to his past teenage self. How he’d explain the reality of magic and Fillory and quests and adventure. If he told his younger self back when he’d hit rock bottom that true love was real and that one day he’d find it but it would come at a terrible cost, would that have given him hope?

It does now. Despite everything somehow, it still does now.

He’s lying in the dark in one of the bedrooms of the loft, unable to sleep even though the Monster is out doing gods know what and he’s been exhausted down to his very DNA for as long as he can remember. There's dried blood on the collar of his shirt and he should change it, he thinks, but what does it matter at this point. Julia slips in and lies down next to him, curled up on her side parallel to him, bent knees almost touching. She insists that she has no powers but despite having no magic she still seems to have some kind of sixth sense about all of them, when they’re scared, when they’re not sleeping. Or maybe that was always just Julia. She’s always had the drive to look after people.

“What do we do now,” Quentin asks rhetorically into the dim room, Julia’s eyes faintly reflecting the glow of the city lights seeping in from around the edges of the room’s curtains.

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky,” Julia replies.

“Fuck up the world?” Q says and Julia huffs out a sad laugh.

“What’s it like?” Julia asks after a moment, her expression going somber and curious.

“What’s what like?” Q asks.

“Loving someone so much it consumes you,” Julia says, holding his gaze. “I’ve loved people before, maybe even thought I was in love once or twice, but never like this.”

“Well right now it fucking hurts,” Q says. He rolls onto his back and squeezes his eyes shut, feeling exposed even in the semi-dark. “More than anything. But it’s like...going through a really long dark cold winter, one you think will never end, one that goes on for so long that you think maybe this is just how it’s going to be from now on, just deep dark winter for the rest of your life. Only then you step outside one day and you take a breath of fresh air and everything smells earthy and damp and  _ alive _ , and you look up and see bits of green and dashes of bright color all around you that somehow cropped up without you even noticing it and everything has started to grow again. The whole world around you is coming alive, and it feels like you’ve been given a fresh start too, one that you weren’t even looking for. And you tilt your face into the sun and it’s like you’re experiencing warmth and light for the very first time. And you know it won’t last forever, that next year there will be another winter and you’ll have go through it all over again, but this time you know you have this waiting for you on the other side. And just knowing that makes all the cold dark nights you’ve ever been through or ever will suffer through in the future worth it. Getting to bask in that warmth for a little while makes it all worth it. That’s...that’s what it feels like I guess.”

“Oh Q,” Julia says. He glances over and sees her wiping away a tear and realizes that he’s crying too. “I wish I could promise you we’ll get him back.”

“I can’t bury him again,” Q says. “I can’t. I know we’ve survived so much already and I should be able to get through this too, but I can’t go through that again, it will _break_ _me._ ”

“We’ll keep fighting for him,” Julia says. “And according to Penny, Eliot is fighting too.”

“I just wish…”

“Wish what?” Julia asks.

“I just wish I could talk to him again,” Q says, yawning. Crying has made him sleepy in a way that pure exhaustion hadn’t, and he lets himself finally drift off in the comforting presence of his best friend.


	2. And You May Ask Yourself How Did I Get Here?

Once Eliot is back in the warm embrace of his memories of the Physical kids’ cottage it starts to really hit him. He saw Q, he touched him, briefly so briefly, but it was him, really him.

“You’re bleeding,” Charlton says tentatively after a moment.

“Huh,” Eliot says, reaching up and touching his nose where it’s dripping. He stares at the wet red stain on his fingers. “Well I’m sure that’s normal right?”

Charlton’ expression tells him all he needs to know.

 

Eliot lets himself wallow for a bit. Wading through his worst memories didn’t come without an emotional toll, and the whiplash between that and seeing Q and desperately trying to get his message across does a number on him. He feels off balance, and somehow that translates into this gilded memory prison beginning to feel like it’s unraveling slightly as well.

 _What would Quentin do_ , he asks himself once he starts to feel guilty about sitting around doing nothing. Well Q had been all ready to sacrifice himself to an eternity of playing Monster babysitter, Eliot thinks bitterly, locked away in Castle Blackspire where Eliot and the others could never reach him again. Admittedly Eliot fucked that up pretty spectacularly, and he’ll probably get shit for that later, but considering Q had been _right there_ when Eliot had broken through, it seems like maybe Q was still playing that role just out in the real world this time. Held captive not by a prison made of walls, but more likely by Eliot’s presence, a never-ending hostage situation. He hopes the Monster isn’t using him against his friends, but he knows the likely answer to that.

However ready Q had been to sacrifice himself, Eliot thinks he wouldn’t have been content to just sit in Castle Blackspire and play games if he’d been able to go through with it. For all that Quentin suffers from depression and is followed by an endless barrage of undermining thoughts, one of the things Eliot loves about him is that despite this he has an endless well of curiosity and enthusiasm for discovering new things.

No Quentin wouldn’t just sit around waiting for rescue, and Eliot won’t either, much as part of him would like to.

This whole personal growth thing is a real bitch sometimes.

He may not have much to work with, stuck in a mental cage of memories like he is, but he’ll do what he can with what he has. Which means, unfortunately, continuing to dig through his memories. If he’s lucky maybe there will be another door tucked away somewhere.

It doesn’t take too long for him to figure out that while he’s been popping in and out of various memories seemingly randomly that they’re actually arranged rather neatly and he moves from one to another not chronologically but rather through linear emotional threads. That being said, they’re stacked up less like files or library books in groups and are laid out more like a hedge maze. There are some dead ends here or there a few shortcuts between unexpected memories, but mostly it’s a winding path of parties, adventure, misery and shame leading inward until it reaches right to the very center of him. It still shakes him a little, finding Q and his big open heart waiting there deep at his very core. It’s not that he hasn’t known about his feelings for Quentin Coldwater, he may be in denial about some things but he’s not completely oblivious, it’s just there’s knowing and then there’s _knowing_.

It was one thing to be vaguely in love with his best friend who may or may not be entirely straight who he may or may not have already spent one blissful alternate-universe lifetime with. It’s quite another to acknowledge that self same person is apparently his soulmate, the love of his life, his lobster or whatever. A lifetime of being told that people like him don’t get any kind of love let alone _this_ had just not prepared him for this kind of reality.

He tries not to spend too much time in that memory as he explores, it’s like tonguing at a sore spot in your mouth when you know you’re only making it worse, but sometimes he can’t help himself. He goes back and he watches himself make the worst mistake of his life and he tries to imagine all the ways he and Q might be reunited for more than a few seconds, think of the perfect words to say to somehow make up for it. He tries to run through all the ways Q might react, and how _he_ should react in reaction to that. Somehow most of the worst case scenarios aren’t as bad as he once would have dwelled on. He knows he might have missed his chance, for example, but he also knows even if he did that he’ll still have part of Q’s heart, will still have him in his life, just maybe not how he wants but as long as Q is alive and happy maybe that will still be okay. Q would never be cruel to him about it, even if he’s moved on. Pity from Q, he thinks, might be the worst case scenario. He couldn’t bear to see that in Q’s eyes.

He doesn’t let himself consider the actual Worst Case Scenario, the one where there is no longer a Q left in the world to let him down easy, that something might have happened between his brief moment of freedom and now, or possibly even worse than that Worst Case Scenario: he gets Q back only to watch him...no he cannot contemplate that, not even in passing.

He mostly tries to focus on the best case scenarios. Where they beat the monster, reunite and this time he doesn’t hesitate and buries his old cowardly ways down deep where they can’t hurt him anymore and Q forgives him for letting him down. Where for once in their many lives they can beat the odds of this final fucked up timeline and actually synch up their actions with their hearts and let themselves love each other without reservation.

He’s considering this possible scenario one day after getting sick of running into dead ends in his own mind, contemplating whether after their first big romantic kiss and their declarations of love are over they should spend the night making love or if at this point the most romantic thing they could do is just sleep for like twenty-four hours first wrapped up in each others arms. He thinks about how tired Q had looked when he’d seen him, and thinks nap first, then sex marathon, and then he looks down at the floor of the throne room where once again past Eliot is making the biggest mistake of his life and beneath their feet is a trap door.

A trap door that did not exist in Fillory’s actual throne room.

It’s dark inside when he opens it and looks in, because of course it is. He grabs a torch from the wall and drops it down but it just drops and drops and drops until eventually the light fades out and disappears without a sound. Not a promising sign.

“This is a bad idea,” Eliot murmurs, the memories of Q and his past self staring at him like he’s a lunatic as he lowers his feet into the trap door, bracing himself before the jump. “Once more into the breach.”

He doesn’t fall for as long as he’d expected, but it is definitely for long enough for him to change his mind about the wisdom of this plan multiple times. He probably should have gone back and asked Charlton if he knew anything about mystery trap doors, but it’s too late now. He squeezes his eyes shut as the speed of his fall seems to increase at a dizzying pace and when he opens them again he’s not falling he’s standing in what Margo likes to refer to as a Muggle Bar, watching some version of himself watch Quentin drink alone in a corner, hair in his face, nose in a book.

“What the fuck,” Eliot murmurs to himself because he does _not_ remember this. Normally he would assume this is some shameful embarrassment that he somehow blotted out due to a night’s heavy drinking but the Eliot in front of him looks shockingly sober even as he orders two cocktails and brings them over to the table that Q is sitting at.

“ _My name is El_ ,” Eliot watches himself declare as he dramatically drapes himself into the seat across from Q. “ _And I cannot attest to the quality of these drinks because I did not make them myself, however they do seem to include quite a lot of alcohol and sometimes that’s all you can ask for. This one’s for you_.”

“ _Oh um,_ ” Q fumbles, setting his book down awkwardly. “ _I’m not sure…_ ”

“ _If this seat is taken I’ll go but I’ve had a very trying week and really don’t think I should be drinking alone_ ,” the other Eliot says. “ _And the only other person here by themself is that man on the other side of the bar who is drinking a Miller High Life and he is literally reading_ The Game _so I am begging you not to subject me to that horror_.”

“ _Oh my god no,_ ” Q laughs awkwardly, gesturing forward at the chair Eliot is already taking up. “ _In that case by all means, the seat is yours_ . _I’m Quentin by the way._ ”

 _“Charmed,”_ Eliot says. He takes a sip of the drink and grimaces.

 _“It’s not that bad,_ ” Q says, taking his own sip.

 _“Oh honey, if you think this is fine just wait til you taste something I’ve whipped up for you,_ ” the other Eliot says, and even poor innocent Q must get the innuendo because he blushes in response and takes another larger gulp of his drink.

 _“What happened?”_ Quentin asks. “ _You said you had a bad week.”_

“ _I lost a friend,”_ Eliot says, looking away, face flickering with some kind of unreadable emotion.

 _“I’m so sorry,”_ Q says, and he’s always been bolder than anyone gives him credit for because he reaches across the table and squeezes Eliot’s hand.

 _“Me too,”_ Eliot replies, squeezing Q’s hand back and leaning forward with some interest. _“We didn’t know each other for very long but he was...important I think. Left a mark.”_

 _“I know it’s not the same thing at all but my best friend got accepted to a school I didn’t even know she’d applied to, and we’ve been drifting apart since she started studying there,”_ Q says. He doesn’t take his hand back. _“We’ve been friends since forever and these days it’s like I hardly know here. I’ve always felt kind of adrift in life but it just feels worse than ever right now. It’s like I’ve lost something without even knowing what it is. And I don’t really know what to do about that.”_

 _“Well you may not be able to get back what was taken from you,”_ the other Eliot says, playing with Q’s fingers and giving him a long considering look. _“But there are many different paths to take in life and if one is taken from you, it may not be the same but you can find a new path. Make new friends. Have new experiences.”_

“Holy shit,” Eliot says as it clicks.

That promise he’d only half seriously made Q when he’d been threatened with expulsion and a memory wipe, he’s watching it play out right in front of him. For half a second he thinks he’s somehow conjured up an old forgotten fantasy, but everything in here, repressed or not, isn’t a fantasy, it’s a memory. Which means this really happened. Which means...

“I still have the memories from the other timelines,” Eliot murmurs to himself, pressing a hand against his mouth. “This is really fucked up.”

Eliot sinks into an open chair nearby, trying to wrap his head around this. Penny 23’s existence clearly denotes that all those other timelines weren’t wiped clean, merely branched off in different directions, old versions of themselves left for dead or left to suffer while they continued on in their new timeline, although it never occurred to him that he might have genuinely lived those lives as well. How did that even work? It had been hard enough wrapping his head around the memories of the life-that-wasn’t in Fillory with Q, and now he has even more lives to contend with apparently.

If only past party boy Eliot knew just what he was signing up for when he’d been accepted to Brakebills.

He watches Q and this other him talk for a while, slowly shifting closer until that Eliot has his arm draped around the back of Q’s chair, a move that he’d made dozens of times with his own Q even long before they were anything but close friends. In retrospect he’s a little embarrassed by how obvious he was, but he can’t worry about that now. The other Eliot murmurs something into Q’s ear, and Q instantly perks up. They pay their tab, gather their coats and that Eliot bustles Q out of the bar, one steadying hand at the small of his back, and honestly Eliot cannot believe that it is this easy.

He follows them into the night although it quickly becomes clear that they aren’t headed to an apartment or a hotel. They enter another bar, and this one Eliot recognizes. It’s a Hedgewitch bar.

Eliot isn’t seducing Q, he’s reintroducing Q to magic.

“What a fucking romantic,” Eliot laughs. He’s about to cross the street to follow them into the bar to see where this is headed when the whole building explodes in a blinding flash of magic. He blinks away the light and sees another trap door amidst the rubble. Well he said he wasn’t going to sit around waiting, it’s time to see how far down this rabbit hole goes.

Eliot takes a leap. Again and again and again. It’s strange, watching himself die in so many different ways. Worse when he doesn’t die but his friends around him do, although generally he doesn’t last too long afterward. Sometimes he dies heroically, flinging himself in front of Margot or Q to protect them, or dying side by side with them as they fight the Beast. Sometimes he dies a cowardly death, messing up a spell or cut down when he turns to run, and occasionally he dies in ways that are just embarrassing and stupid. Sometimes he manages to seduce Q, usually ruining Q’s relationship with Alice in the process, sometimes he manages to just pine without it turning self destructive. Occasionally it seems like maybe he and Q will manage to take that leap from friends to lovers without any collateral damage but so far as he can tell, in all the previous timelines they always died before it could happen.

There’s only one timeline, so far as he can tell, where he and Q never met at all. There aren’t too many memories from that one, just Eliot being too hungover to greet the new student at the gate and sending Todd in his place. He’d heard a while later through the grapevine that a first year class along with Dean Fogg got wiped out by some unknown monster. That Eliot died not long afterward, neck snapped by Mike in his sleep. He doesn’t find out what happened to any of the others in that universe.

It’s strange, making his way down through the layers of timelines he apparently lived but still has no memory of, despite the fact that he can watch them play out in front of him here. The thing about his memories of his life in Fillory with Quentin and their son is that despite being a timeline that never was, those memories are too closely interwoven with his normal memories to tell apart. Maybe it’s because that life existed in a magical bubble of some kind, hidden safely away in Fillory’s past, perfect and complete, existing in complete opposition to these jagged violent timelines stacked one on top of each other, written and overwritten with tragedy and blood in a way they somehow managed to escape in that one perfect life.

How many lives have they known each other now, if you add them all up? Some of these alternate lives are short, ending almost before they begin, although some last longer. None last lifetimes, but they must add up to years and years of him knowing Q in all kinds of ways. How many hundreds of drinks had they shared, how many times had Eliot run a casual hand over Q’s back or through his hair until it felt like second nature long before he and Quentin ever met for the first time in their own current timeline. He thinks back to that meeting, how he’d felt a thrill of anticipation that he’d tried to tamp down as he’d sprawled easily, appealingly across the school’s cool marble sign. He’d forced himself to act aloof when he’d met Quentin, but as he’d shown him to the testing center there had been a fierce ache in his chest at the thought that Q might not make it in. He’d rushed to tell Margot about who he’d just met, despite her unimpressed opinions on the subject of his newest infatuation but this felt _different_. He’d told Q that he bonded quickly but that wasn’t true. That couldn’t be further from the truth in fact. So maybe this was the answer, maybe with Quentin it wasn’t love at first sight, but love at fortieth sight.

And yet he still managed to fuck it up.

He needs to keep fighting because he can’t let that be the end of things for him and Q. He needs to make it right. He’s not going to let this timeline be yet another tragedy summed up by the word _almost_.

Things had just been so easy for them in their life in Fillory and he hadn’t trusted it. Not that every day was a picnic. They got sick and tired, they fought, sometimes even terribly. But none of those memories made it onto his chalkboard of shame. It was like they’d been given a fresh slate on that quest, their past slowly slipping away until they could just exist for the first time without the baggage that had been weighing each of them down for so long. How could they possibly expect a love that had flourished under such conditions to live in the real world where every single day was a fight just to survive their own worst instincts?

Eliot knew now the answer to that of course was that the best way to survive, to better themselves, was to fight for each other, but of course one moment of doubt had ruined everything.

Back in the other timeline they had both known his health was declining in Fillory as time wore on and for all that they had magic and access to Chatwin’s torrent where they were, some things cannot be reversed. He’d been content enough to watch Quentin work, secure in the knowledge that even if Eliot wasn’t around to see it, that Q would finish the quest as he was always meant to. And as he’d felt himself start to slip away, his last thought had been regret that he was leaving Quentin alone and a vague, selfish relief that he hadn’t been the one to have to bury the love of his life.

And then suddenly he was young and scared and back in the middle of a war that he’d never asked for and beautiful brave Q had taken a leap and suddenly barraged by all the insecurities he’d managed to leave behind when in Fillory he’d panicked.

He knows better now. He wants to be brave like Q, he _can_ be brave like that. And until he gets back face to face with Quentin, the least he can do is face these residual memories.

He’s not sure how long it takes him to make his way down to Timeline Zero. Days, maybe weeks. Months even. He makes it though.

“ _Quentin Coldwater?”_ the first Eliot says, and Eliot can see that this time it’s not an act, this Eliot in front of him is genuinely bored by having to greet a potential new first year. He has no idea, Eliot thinks in wonder as the other Eliot hustles Q off. He has no idea how his life is about to change, how important the man he just met was.

He almost follows them, but there’s a strange light that catches his eye. Or rather a strange darkness. It’s creeping out of the Suicide Fountain, beams of darkness like tentacles reaching toward him.

There are no more timelines to explore, as far as he knows, but somehow he knows that the darkness must lead somewhere. He takes a few steps toward it, then stops. It could be a trap. He’s avoided the other monsters in his memories so far, sending duplicated memories off to distract them while he pokes around, but maybe this will lead him right to them. He could call it quits, go back to the Cottage and wait.

But he’s come this far after all…

Eliot takes a leap of faith.

  


He’s trembling when he gets back to the Cottage. He can conjure up all the alcohol and cigarettes and drugs his heart desires here in this monstrous dreamscape but none of it quite has the same effect that it does in the real world. He smokes a cigarette anyways, just to have something to do with his shaking hands while he tries to regulate his breathing and think what he can possible do next.

The door to taking back his body for a moment is out, he would have found another one surely in all of his memory travels, so that was apparently a once-and-done situation. Charlton is apparently MIA since he’s been gone, nowhere to be found, and magic in here is nothing more than an illusion, nothing he can actually work with. The only options he thinks he has left are waiting for help or diving even deeper into the Monster’s mind which seems both inadvisable and untenable in his current state.

Because beneath the fountain weren’t his memories. They were the Monster’s memories buried so deep Eliot can’t believe he found them. He can’t let the Monster find them, that much is clear. He needs a plan.

He can’t do this alone. He doesn’t know how much longer he can stand being alone.

He’s still no closer to figuring out what to do hours, maybe days later, still feeling seasick, the Cottage no longer feeling safe anymore but unbalanced and _wrong_ , when he hears voices outside.

At first he thinks Charlton might be back, or that somehow his memories are beginning to seep together, but when he looks out he sees himself but _not_ himself. It’s the Monster, but he’s not alone. It’s not who he would have chosen to see, but Penny will do in a pinch, and it’s an infinite relief when Penny manages to sneak away long enough for Eliot to tell him what he found. They have mere moments to speak before the Monster notices, once again, and Eliot knows it’s more important for the others to know what he now knows, but he can’t help but take a second to give Penny a message.

It’s not a conversation they should be having through someone else, but Q needs to know it’s a conversation they will have one day, if the fates allow it.

 _Tell Coldwater I’m going to say it to his face_.

Penny rolls his eyes a bit at that, mutters a bit about how just because he’s a Traveler doesn’t make him some sort of romantic go-between, but he promises to pass the message along. And then the Monster is calling for ‘Percy’, and Eliot manages to hustle Penny out of there before it becomes aware of his presence and then he’s alone again.

 _Naturally_.


	3. Same As It Ever Was

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short but sweet! Thank you for reading, hopefully I will be revisiting this fandom soon.

Quentin jolts awake with a start, someone else’s hand firmly pressed against his mouth. His first thought is this is some new game from the Monster but when he forces his eyes open it’s Penny in front of him, one hand keeping Quentin from making noise, the other with one finger held to his own lips, indicating silence. Behind Penny is Julia, hovering with that worried look in her eyes that seems to have become a permanent resident these days. She nods to the side slightly and without moving his head too much Quentin glances to his left and sees the Monster, curled up around him, sleeping inelegantly with its mouth hanging open arms and legs sprawled awkwardly about, so unlike Eliot. He looks back at Julia and frowns in question. The Monster’s habit of occasionally passing out on or near Quentin is a fairly recent development but not new enough to cause Penny or Julia to freak out. Penny just takes his hand off of Quentin’s mouth and reaches for his forehead.

_ Good luck _ , Q sees Julia mouth before Penny touches his forehead and everything goes black.

 

When he blinks he’s in a field and for half a second he thinks Penny just traveled him somewhere, maybe Fillory for some reason. He looks around, trying to get his bearings and then there’s a familiar door in front of him. It hits him suddenly, a wild rush of cold then hot through his body as he realizes where he is and he has to steady himself for a second before he rushes forward through the door.

He’s inside the Cottage before he knows it. It seems empty and everything feels just a little bit  _ off _ , and he has half a second to panic.

“El?” he calls. “Eliot?”

“Q?” Eliot rounds the corner, long legs carrying him across the short distance between them and then he’s being swept up in Eliot’s arms and crushed to his chest in a tight embrace.

Quentin is crying, he thinks. He doesn’t care, after everything they’ve been through and will undoubtedly still have to go through, he deserves to get a little emotional. He pushes himself up on his toes slightly so he can tuck his face in against Eliot’s neck, squeezing harder around his back and can feel Eliot’s hand automatically raise to stroke along his hair and just for a second he can close his eyes and pretend that no time has passed and nothing has changed. He can feel Eliot’s heart beating wildly in his chest to match his own and he sighs deeply, letting himself have this one moment of pure content.

“We’re going to do this again properly once I’m out of here and we’re face to face in our real bodies but just in case…” Eliot says, breaking the silence.

“Eliot…” Q tries to cut him off, a thread of anxiety shooting through him before he can stop it.

“ _ Just in case _ , you need to know that I love you,” Eliot says, shocking him into stillness before continuing forcefully. “I am  _ in love with you _ . In every way it is possible to be in love with a person. I want to spend every life in every universe and every timeline with you. Full stop.”

“Oh,” Q says dumbly.

“Just fyi,” Eliot says pulling back slightly so they can look at each other. He tries for a weak smile, but Q can see the fear behind it, as if Q could have literally any response but the one he’s about to give.

Kissing Eliot has always been, well, magical, but here in this moment it’s overwhelmingly so. Eliot leans into it immediately, one hand tangled in Q’s hair at the base of his neck, the other sliding around to press against the small of his back and where they’re pressed up against each other he can feel Eliot’s whole body relax in relief. His lips are as soft and yielding as Q remembers as he lets the kiss be drawn out for several long moments. Eliot loves kissing, loves doing nothing but kiss for hours even, something that had surprised Q at first but in retrospect should have been obvious to anyone who knew El well enough to see past his facade and find the touch starved romantic he tried to keep hidden underneath. Q lets Eliot set the pace, just kissing with no real intent until he’s had his fill enough to finally press two final kisses gently to the corner of Q’s mouth and then his jaw before pulling back to hold Q at arm’s length, inspecting him.

“You cut your hair,” Eliot says with a frown.

“Brian cut it,” Quentin says with a shrug.

“Brian?” Eliot asks.

“Yeah god, you’ve missed so much,” Q says. “That part’s over now so I’m not going to waste time on it. Don’t worry about Brian.”

“You’ve also got blood…” Eliot gestures toward his shirt.

“God, I didn’t even notice, I think I fell asleep like this,” Q says, pulling away and tugging at his collar. “And it’s not even real in here right, I could be wearing anything. Sorry.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Eliot says looking heartbroken. “Come here, let me take care of this.”

“It’s not even real blood,” Q protests, but Eliot is already leading him up the stairs to the bathroom just off his old bedroom.

“It is in the real world though right,” Eliot says, giving him a knowing look. “I don’t know how much time we have and I can’t do anything about it there so let me just do this here.”

“Okay,” Q relents. He lets Eliot slowly undress him, piece by piece. It’s gentle and soothing and oh so comforting and he lets himself relax into the old routine. They step into the warm water of the shower together and Q lets his eyes fall shut as Eliot takes care of him, washing away the last drops of blood and massaging his head and neck into relaxing.

“Remember that cramped little tub we had back in Fillory?” Eliot asks as Q leans against his chest. They stand under the water, just enjoying the feeling of being together, warm skin against warm skin.

“It was a perfectly normal sized tub okay, you just have unnaturally long legs,” Q protests. 

“We made it work, we both fit,” Eliot says.

“Barely, and then there was that time you tried to start something while we were in it and…”

“Flooded half the cottage, I remember,” Eliot says with a laugh. “God there’s so much I need to tell you.”

“Me too,” Q says. “But most of it I don’t want to get into right now. I want to just enjoy this while it lasts.”

“Speaking of which…” Eliot says.

“The Monster is sleeping, that’s why Penny was able to send me in here, but I don’t know for how long,” Q says. In here he’s able to turn the water off with a twitch of his hand, and he leads Eliot back out of the shower. He lets Eliot smother him in a soft towel, drying him off carefully even though in here it’s probably not necessary. He’d found in Fillory that there were times when letting Eliot comfort him was the best way of comforting Eliot.

“You look tired,” Q says as Eliot leads him to the bed and carefully arranges him on it before tucking himself around Q, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close.

“It’s weird, right?” Eliot says with clearly forced nonchalance. “Considering I’m not even in control of a physical body right now.”

“God, El, you’re bleeding,” Q jerks upright as he sees red bloom under Eliot’s nose. Eliot takes it in stride however, just pulling out a brightly colored handkerchief and dabbing at it carefully.

“It’ll pass, they always do,” Eliot says. “Things have been a little off, ever since I managed to break out and talk to you. I don’t think the Monster is doing so well.”

“He’s been off with us as well,” Q admits guiltily. “He been having human cravings. He suddenly started to need sleep. We’ve been trying to handle it, trying to get him to take care of your body but he can be, well, difficult.”

“I know you’re doing the best you can,” Eliot says softly. Q shifts slightly so he can lean his head against Eliot’s shoulder. They lie in silence for a while, and Q lets the easy familiar sound of Eliot’s breathing and the sweet home of his scent lull him into comfort.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Q promises. “Soon.”

“I know you will,” Eliot says. “I believe in you.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” Q admits, voice breaking.

“I’ve missed you too, love,” Eliot says, kissing Q gently. “Just always remember that I…”

  
  


Q wakes up in the loft. He can see the Monster retreating out the door and when he turns his head Julia and Penny are sitting awkwardly by the bed.

“Well?” Julia asks, looking hopeful.

“Thank you,” Q says. It wasn’t enough, it’ll never be enough until they get Eliot back, well and truly, but it’ll sustain him, he thinks, through those moments when things get difficult and painful. And knowing what they know now, things are about to get bad.

“So what are we doing tonight,” Julia asks.

“Same thing we do every night,” Q says, forcing himself to sit up. He tries to give a hopeful smile. “Trying to save the world.”

“And Eliot too,” Julia says, reaching out and holding his hand.

“And Eliot too,” Q agrees.


End file.
